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There had been, in fact, one opportunity since her arrival. The researchers from the linguistics department had met up on a Sunday to walk the Appian Way. Someone had invited a cousin—Riccardo—who arrived wearing a leather jacket and loafers.
“Are we attempting Everest?” he asked, surveying the foreigners with their water bottles and sports clothes. He and Lea fell in line and ended up walking most of the path together. Riccardo told her the history of the trail, not suspecting that she might actually know far more about it than he did. Anyway, she didn’t mind. He related his vague facts with animation, complimented Lea on her observations and questions, made outrageous jokes about the others. It felt special to be his accomplice. There was a picnic afterward, and the two of them split up to join separate conversations. When they were leaving, Riccardo told Lea he could drop her off, since he lived near her. They went to a bar across from her apartment.
chuckled
In imagining the act, she’d forgotten the facts: his rush to get to it—not roughness, really, more like bashfulness; his reluctance to look at her for too long. Back in California, she’d conceded to his haste, hadn’t insisted that he slow down or that he meet her gaze. Now she was more demanding. There was a twinge of antagonism in her touch, her hands directing him, yanking at him to stay still. She hardly knew where it came from—whether she was putting on an act or letting resentment seep through.
rough
“Sounds delicious,” Lea said. She got up and sat on his lap, straddling him. If only he were staying a bit longer, they would fall into perfect rhythm. Something had begun to loosen in the past few nights, though there was still the tug and pull—his hurry and her resentment, one perpetuating the other.
oh girl
There was nothing for him to apologize for, and so he hadn’t.
Lea had been wondering about something, on and off during the past days. She realized now that she hadn’t had a chance to ask: How had Leo responded to the woman’s story? What had he actually said to her on the plane? She doubted that he had posed any questions—he wouldn’t have wanted to pry, or to say something wrong. Lea could picture him listening so silently that it wasn’t clear if he was listening at all.
She felt, for a moment, on Janet’s side, sympathetic that the woman had had to tilt her story further toward invention, to make sure that the quiet, kind-seeming man would continue to keep her company.
beware of people like this
She’d come to Paris with an artist research grant and met the photographer in the final months of her visa. They admired each other’s self-sufficiency, their mutual lack of neediness. The photographer liked to tell Lara that he’d never had a partner before her who didn’t rely on him for fulfillment. After her residency ended, Lara moved into the photographer’s apartment. When her visa expired, they got married. Lara’s parents came from Istanbul, and the four of them went out for lunch after the ceremony at the municipal hall. The relationship was over by the following summer. The end crept up on them, announced itself of its own accord; they accepted it without a fight. The photographer took a project in Estonia, to document abandoned sanatoriums. He and Lara agreed to remain married until Lara got her citizenship. Lara moved to a studio apartment, found work teaching and guiding private museum tours. Her clients on the tours were mostly wealthy older couples who liked to show off their own knowledge. Lara complimented them on this, showed enthusiastic approval in the banal, repeated facts of art history—that Michelangelo freed the human form from blocks of marble, that Rodin had taken credit for the work of his lover, that Cézanne had truly paved the way to Cubism.
Selin smiled. The bookshop, she explained, sold large-format books, with magnified details on every page. She spread her arms to show how big. Two years ago, she went on, Ozan was diagnosed with early retinal deterioration. In front of his right eye was a black spot that was slowly spreading. He could still see clearly with his other eye, but it was a strain to look at things for a long time.
“But he won’t go blind?”
“He will,” Selin said. She was a step ahead of Lara now.
“I’m so sorry,” Lara said, too loudly. “That must be very difficult. But it’s so special that you stayed together. It’s really wonderful of you.”
They stood at a crossing, waiting for the green light. Selin looked at Lara but didn’t say anything. Then she pointed to the metro entrance ahead.
ahh the judgment seeps through
I once heard a woman say that immediately upon finding out, she’d felt the dawning of a strange inner power. It seemed as though she could undertake any task, could live through any hardship. This was a strength not of muscles, the woman said, but of light. In this new form of herself, she felt more alive than she ever had before.
She was recounting all this once it was already over, after she’d had an abortion, but her memory of that brief experience was still tinted by her encounter with what she now believed to be immortality.
The woman’s story stayed with me, and I thought about her words when I myself found out, searching my body and mind for signs of my own power. I can’t say that I felt it, not in the way that the woman had described, but I certainly sensed a shift, as if I’d entered a different dimension and would from then on inhabit two worlds at once: one steady and flat, and the other mysterious, with depths I could not yet fathom but knew were there.
She thinks that in time, she will write here. But there is no rush, unlike for her friends, who always talk of another life, brighter and more established than their own. They are impatient to be rid of the modest jobs they consider embarrassments, even humiliations.
Recently, barely fifteen minutes into a lesson, a mother came to the bedroom and told Leyla she would have to leave.
“We’re going out early,” she said. “Sweetheart, why don’t you get ready?”
Then she added to Leyla, “Don’t worry, we’ll pay you anyway.”
But humiliation requires participation, and Leyla pretends not to hear her.
The last time I talked to her was on a New Year’s Eve, not long before her death.
“Happy New Year!” I shouted. “I hope you’re having a glass of cognac!”
“Remember, Masha, when you and I celebrated?”
“Of course, it was wonderful.”
“You were the last. They said I shouldn’t host anymore.”
“You were a very good host,” I said.
“You shouldn’t have told them,” she said. “Whatever you told them.”
Then she added, “But I forgive you.”
</3
“That’s not what I meant,” Nehla said. “I’m just glad I won’t have to get into too many arguments with my family.” She added, “Most of them support the government, you know.”
I was startled. I couldn’t understand why she had kept this information from me, and told her as much.
“I thought you knew,” Nehla said. “I mean, so much of the country supports them.”
But she was on such good terms with her family, I protested. She seemed so fond of everyone. It was unbelievable that these people would have such untenable values. Nehla looked at me quizzically. For a moment I thought she’d contradict me, or say that I couldn’t possibly grasp the complexity of the situation, but instead she shrugged. We had reached the apartment, and with a forlorn look on her face, she rang the doorbell.